Iran Balks At Women's Rights

Conservatives In Parliament Reject Reforms

September 20, 2004|By Nazila Fathi The New York Times

TEHRAN, Iran — The winners of Iran's parliamentary elections last February have focused on women's rights in their efforts to reverse some of the reforms carried out under the moderate president, Mohammad Khatami.

After the legislative session began in June, the 290-member Parliament, including all 12 women, abruptly rejected proposals to expand the inheritance right of Iranian women and to adopt the U.N. convention that bans discrimination against women. They also backed away from previous efforts to make "gender equality" a goal of the country's next four-year development plan.

Instead, the new Parliament has called for placing more restrictions on women's attire and on their social freedoms.

Since the 1979 Islamic revolution, women have been forced to cover their heads and wear long, loose coats in public. But many have defied the restrictions since Khatami's election in 1997 and started wearing tighter and more colorful coats and showing more hair.

In recent months, though, newspapers have reported that scores of women have been arrested in Tehran, the capital, and around the country because they were wearing what is considered un-Islamic dress.

Members of Parliament have called for segregating men and women at universities and for other limits on women's activities. Protests have been organized to call for a crackdown on freedoms for women and have contended that women ridicule religious sanctities by violating the dress code.

The previous Parliament, dominated by reformists, embraced legal rights for women and expanded women's rights to divorce and child custody.

Eshrat Shaegh, one of the women elected to Parliament in the sweep by conservatives, wrote a letter to Khatami in July that called for an end to the mixing of unmarried young men and women in public places.

"How do you intend to resolve problems by allowing half-nude women to mingle and party with men who dress like women?" she asked in her letter.

Some political analysts here believe that the crackdown ultimately will not succeed.

"The more they put pressure, the more they get a reaction because people simply do not think such restrictions can solve their more basic needs," said Ahmad Zeidabadi, a political scientist and journalist.